Caught in a Culture War, Georgetown Day School Holds Fast to Its Mission

WASHINGTON — A decade after the Supreme Courtroom struck down segregated education in 1954, the president of a neighborhood affiliation right here wrote a letter urging leaders of native personal colleges to cease granting scholarships to additional the reason for integration, asserting that it was “unwholesome and unwise to have a pupil physique so miscegenated.”

One of many founders of Georgetown Day College, which had been built-in for 20 years at that time and whose inhabitants was one-fourth Black, wrote again.

Edith Nash, who had based the college together with her husband, famous that not solely had it “all the time had extra white candidates for scholarship help than Negro,” however “a completely combined enrollment is our intention,” in response to the letter, elements of which have been printed in The Washington Put up that 12 months.

“When you really feel this inhabitants is ‘miscegenated,’” she added, “that’s your downside.”

Almost 60 years later, the primary built-in college in Washington nonetheless firmly embraces the mission of its founders. Georgetown Day got here underneath a nationwide microscope this week within the escalating tradition warfare over antiracism instructing in colleges.

The warfare spilled into the affirmation hearings of Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, the primary Black lady nominated to the Supreme Courtroom, who has served on Georgetown Day’s board of trustees since 2019.

The elite personal college turned a goal of Republican senators, who portrayed it because the poster baby for crucial race principle, an educational time period that conservatives have co-opted to problem efforts to show kids about racism and inequality.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, took intention at Georgetown Day in her opening remarks at Choose Jackson’s listening to on Monday. The varsity had hosted a “woke kindergarten” program, Ms. Blackburn asserted, and it had taught 5-year-olds that they’ll select their gender and “pushes an anti-racist schooling program for white households.”

Ms. Blackburn advised Choose Jackson that her “public endorsement of this kind of progressive indoctrination of our kids causes one nice concern with regards to how it’s possible you’ll rule on circumstances involving parental rights.”

However many Georgetown Day dad and mom, college students and alumni say the college’s historical past of social justice activism and its antiracism efforts have been why they selected to enroll there.

In interviews, many individuals within the college’s neighborhood proudly cited Georgetown Day’s founding worth of racial equality, in defiance of segregation legal guidelines. The concept that college students have been being indoctrinated — and that the college’s core values have been being weaponized towards the primary Black feminine nominee to the Supreme Courtroom — was as unjust because it was insulting, they stated.

“Georgetown Day College’s founding exemplifies what may be finest about this nation: folks of various backgrounds coming collectively to make their neighborhood a greater place for everybody,” stated Debra Perlin, a guardian of a first-grade pupil. She described the college as a “nurturing, caring and academically rigorous setting.”

Forty p.c of the 1,075 kids who attend the college establish as college students of shade. Core to Georgetown Day’s tutorial imaginative and prescient is fostering open-mindedness and a collective dedication to justice, dad and mom stated; it held a Transgender Day of Visibility final 12 months and every week of Black Lives Matter occasions this 12 months.

Chris Suarez, one other guardian, stated he wouldn’t describe his kindergartner as “woke” however worldly. “My son brings dwelling books which can be reflective of the variety of cultures in america, that open him as much as many alternative views,” he stated. “And I feel that’s a worthwhile factor.”

Conservative lawmakers tried to color Choose Jackson as a champion of crucial race principle based mostly on her previous citations of authors and texts used to form trendy civil rights debates — particularly, Derrick Bell, the lawyer who’s broadly credited with founding crucial race principle, and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator The New York Occasions’s 1619 Venture.

However Georgetown Day emerged as a shocking goal.

Situated within the rich Tenleytown neighborhood in Northwest Washington, the college has for many years educated kids of the liberal and conservative elite. Mother and father who select to enroll their kids purchase into its mission, for greater than $40,000 a 12 months.

That the curriculum is hardly foisted on households who search out the college appeared to matter little to Republicans who injected it into Choose Jackson’s hearings.

One of the crucial racially charged strains of questioning got here from Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Florida, who claimed on Tuesday that Georgetown Day’s curriculum was “crammed and overflowing with crucial race principle.” Flanked by a blown-up web page from “Antiracist Child,” by Ibram X. Kendi, Mr. Cruz held up e book after e book that he described as assigned studying on the college and grilled Choose Jackson about whether or not she endorsed their messages.

He went on to read a passage from another of Dr. Kendi’s books, “Stamped (For Youngsters): Racism, Antiracism and You,” which can be within the library catalog and on studying lists on the personal college in Houston that Mr. Cruz’s kids attend.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Cruz stated his questions weren’t meant to problem dad and mom’ decisions or personal colleges’ autonomy to find out their very own programming — rights that Republicans champion.

“I’m saying that Choose Jackson is on the board of a faculty that aggressively teaches crucial race principle,” he stated, “and that’s an excessive and divisive principle that pits kids towards different kids, divides us based mostly on race, and teaches a false and revisionist historical past of our nation.”

Choose Jackson advised Mr. Cruz that she had not reviewed the books and that they don’t come up in her work.

However what resonated most amongst members of the Georgetown Day neighborhood was her description of the college’s “particular historical past,” citing the Jewish and Black households who banded collectively to create the establishment in 1945 as a result of their kids couldn’t attend public colleges collectively.

“The concept of equality, justice, is on the core of the Georgetown Day College mission,” Choose Jackson, whose dad and mom attended segregated colleges, told Mr. Cruz. “It’s a non-public college such that each guardian who joins the neighborhood does so willingly, with an understanding that they’re becoming a member of a neighborhood that’s designed to be sure that each baby is valued, each baby is handled as having inherent value, and none are discriminated towards due to race.”

Aidan Kohn-Murphy, a senior at Georgetown Day and the president of the Scholar Workers Council, its pupil authorities, stated he was “confused” by the “gotcha questions,” given the college’s historical past.

Mr. Kohn-Murphy has attended Georgetown Day for the reason that fourth grade, and he stated he couldn’t recall being instructed in crucial race principle or studying any of the books that Mr. Cruz displayed. However together with “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Nice Gatsby,” he stated he had learn books that reinforce the notion that the “battle towards racism isn’t being colorblind, not pretending that racism doesn’t exist.”

“Nobody is indoctrinating anybody,” he added. “We’re studying from the previous.”

Georgetown Day has additionally taught Mr. Kohn-Murphy the right way to weigh various views, he stated. In eighth grade, college students are required to finish a undertaking on a constitutional problem and to have interaction with audio system who maintain opposing views. His group selected affirmative motion. One of many audio system his group invited was Edward Blum, the conservative authorized strategist who has fought to overturn affirmative motion in faculty admissions and who helped convey a case towards Harvard College to the Supreme Courtroom this 12 months.

Choose Jackson is considered one of 23 members of Georgetown Day’s board of trustees; her finest buddy and faculty roommate, Lisa Fairfax, a regulation professor on the College of Pennsylvania, is the board’s chairwoman. Choose Jackson wouldn’t be the one Supreme Courtroom justice with ties to Georgetown Day: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, the primary Black Supreme Courtroom justice, additionally despatched their kids there and Justice Marshall sat on its board of trustees.

Georgetown Day describes the board as working intently with its head of college to make sure its “short- and long-term monetary well being” and to safeguard its “founding goal as a racially and religiously inclusive college whose academic philosophy derives from the assumption that range is the bottom out of which nice studying grows.”

Spokeswomen for Georgetown Day and its board of trustees didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The Republican Nationwide Committee this week despatched an e-mail taking intention on the college’s lately enacted Anti-Racism Motion Plan, citing parts like affinity teams, which it stated amounted to “racial segregation.”

The motion plan features a litany of range, inclusion and fairness efforts, together with “anti-racist schooling programming for white households,” a brand new mentoring program for school of shade and contemplating classroom demographics as a part of the location course of for college kids.

At a guardian assembly the place the pinnacle of college mentioned the plan, Ms. Fairfax launched a brand new provision within the enrollment contract that oldsters signal, the college newspaper reported in January. The availability required that oldsters “acknowledge and perceive that G.D.S. is an establishment that values range, fairness and inclusion, and that has made a dedication to work actively towards particular person and systemic racism, hatred, oppression and bigotry of any form.” By signing the doc, dad and mom agree to hitch within the college’s efforts, it stated.

The availability solely formalizes what many alumni and oldsters described as an unwritten contract that had been understood for many years.

Sean High quality, the guardian of a junior who has attended the college for the reason that second grade, stated his son was studying the right way to confront the identical societal points the college was grappling with when he graduated in 1992.

“Our youngsters aren’t robots,” Mr. High quality stated. “They’re not advised what to suppose, they’re taught the right way to query, and so they’re uncovered to concepts in an open setting.”

Referring to Mr. Cruz’s assault, he added: “They’re being taught the right way to establish issues like this — ways that divert away from what we actually have to be speaking about.”

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.